For several years, Wiley X has been at the forefront of industrial safety standards when it comes to eyewear. Now with its newly released Blue Print for Success program, Building a Bulletproof Profit Center, the company is making it easy for eyecare professionals (ECPs) to reach out to local businesses with a need for eyewear safety as a way to grow their own business and increase their bottom line. The free program includes a white paper, excerpted below, as well as an industrial-blueprint-esque tri-fold brochure and the expertise of the Wiley X team.
BLUEPRINT FOR THE BLUE PRINT Wiley X had a specific strategy in mind for the program—one that has proven effective. The brochure’s first page starts with the words “Building a Bulletproof Profit Center.” It lists factors ECPs can consider to determine whether they’re good candidates for it as well as some highlighted benefits.
Rob Maser, commercial sales director for Wiley X, addressed an intentional omission on the first page of the brochure: “Nowhere on there does it say ‘industrial safety,’” he said. According to Maser, most people associate industrial safety glasses with “clear plastic, cheap-looking, flat, maybe with rubberized side-shields attached to the temples. They’re ugly, uncomfortable, and you buy them at the hardware store for $1.75.”
The goal of the Blue Print for Success is to get ECPs on board with the concept of building a profit center and then introducing the approach of this new way of obtaining patients—with a premium-level industrial safety product.
TAKING A HANDS-ON APPROACH The white paper lays out the steps practices need to take in order to get themselves into the game, and Wiley X’s reps can help keep ECPs on track. The first recommendation in what’s referred to as the Sequence of Construction is for ECPs to “identify local industrial and commercial employers.” Once they’ve accomplished this, it’s up to them to reach out to these employers and prove their worth as industry experts.
The program requires practitioners to be proactive and really assert themselves as experts in the field. Not only are they introducing potential customers and patients to the product, they are also explicitly asking for their business and setting up a program for writing prescriptions and dispensing eyewear.
As practices establish relationships with industrial and commercial employers (and their safety directors), Wiley X provides its customers with a sample case to share with their potential patients and recommends that practitioners tour sites in person to “assess exposure to eye injuries.”
EVERYBODY’S A WINNER The Blue Print for Success presents ECPs with examples of tangible advantages both for their own businesses and for the employers they are hoping to add as clients. The customers’ benefits include the fulfillment of OSHA requirements regarding eye protection and general eye-injury prevention. (According to the Blue Print for Success, 2,000 eye injuries occur daily nationwide.) Practitioners are simultaneously creating new profit centers for their own businesses.
And Wiley X is there to help at every step along the way. Maser said, “We want to make this a tool—a blueprint—for ECPs to take the steps necessary to build a profit center.”
In Canada, FOSafety Eyewear is the largest Wiley X retailer. Charlotte Kessler, vice president for business development for FOSafety Eyewear, said, “We believe in being innovative and bringing the latest technologies and the best products to our clients. With 15 locations in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, the ability to service our clients on-site, the recent completion of our new state-of-the-art fully digital lens manufacturing lab, and the use of industry-leader Wiley X frame product and the Blue Print for Success, we are achieving this.”
Bonnie Sager, OD, of the Sager Associates Consulting Group in Oyster Bay, NY, worked closely with Maser to create the content for the program. She stresses the many benefits of this program. “ECPs have a wonderful platform to receive PR in their community as the expert in this field,” she said, “and they are afforded the benefit of helping employees realize better and safer job performance while helping companies realize a good return on their safety dollar investment.”
GETTING STARTED Practices interested in participating in the Blue Print for Success program can contact their Wiley X representative, call Wiley X at 800-776-7842, or ask for more information via the Wiley X Web site.
Rachel Bozek is a freelance writer who includes the optical field as one of her areas of expertise. Contact feedback@visioncareventure.com with comments and/or suggestions for future topics.
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As practices establish relationships with industrial and commercial employers (and their safety directors), Wiley X provides its customers with a sample case to share with their potential patients and recommends that practitioners tour sites in person to “assess exposure to eye injuries.” 